Many of you know that my son is an HR contract worker in Afghanistan. This morning at  6:00 a.m. (Afghanistan time) his compound in Kabul was attacked by Taliban men dressed in women’s burkas. They set off a car bomb at the front entrance and then began lobbing grenades into the compound and shooting. By the grace of God, my son got into a bunker safely, but it was the closest call he’s had since going over there. A sad little side note is that May 2 is his birthday and the cooks had made him a little birthday cake–which got destroyed by shrapnel–along with most of his clothes which was in the laundry that took a major hit. A pretty lousy birthday.’

I got to skype with him this morning, and he is fine. Here is a small story about the experience that he sent me to cheer me up:

“Here is your happy thought, Mom. I got to the bunker and was looking around and saw my Rough Tough Marine friend sitting at the end of the bunker reading An Uncommon Grace when the second round of bullets and explosions were going on. I knew he was ready to fight if need be, but calm, cool, and collected there he sat slowly flipping the pages as he read. He finished it and said. “When does your mom’s next book come out?”

I wish I could hug that Marine’s neck right now! Along with my son’s!

I’m hanging out with one of my Amish friends today–she’s writing some poetry for me to use in my next book–and somehow we get to talking about homemade Amish egg noodles. She tells me she doesn’t know how to make them. To put this in perspective, this is a woman who milks cows, raises chickens, grows a huge vegetable garden, and helps butcher her own pigs. The fact that she’s never made homemade egg noodles astonishes me.

It turns out that there is a small local factory that makes Amish egg noodles and all the Amish women simply buy them dried and packaged.

Well–thanks to my mom’s old-fashioned cooking, I have made tons of egg noodles! So I volunteer to teach this Amish woman and her five daughters how to make my favorite dish which I always thought was Amish: Egg noodles and cabbage drizzled with butter and sprinkled with crisp bacon.

So here I am today, with five lovely Old Order Amish girls ages twenty-one to five, gathered around me while we mix and roll and cut. The mother fries the bacon and cooks the cabbage while watching ad commenting from the stove. The littlest one really wants to help, so I let her mix the flour and egg and use the rolling pin. We both manage to get covered in flour.

One daughter is sewing a teddy bear to sell. She turns the treadle sewing machine around facing us, so she can watch our fun while she sews.

So…I’m in Holmes County, researching my next Amish book, and since I’m going to be here all week and it’s still not tourist season, the owner of Hotel Millersburg gave me a great discount. This historic hotel is lovely and clean–decorated in antiques and authentic Victorian decor. Only one problem-it turns out that this really IS off-season. A three-story hotel–and housekeeping told me this morning that I’m the only one staying here. Seriously. It’s after nine o’clock and I just crept down the stairs to get some ice and a pop. Could hear every creak of the floorboards. Felt like all the old pictures of dead people hanging on the hall way walls were looking at me. You know–moving eyes. Came back to my room. Slammed it shut. Hit the dead bolt immediately wrote down a title for a new Amish book—Murder In the Millersburg Hotel. lol